I’ve just finished up a once-in-a-lifetime two-week tour of India with my college-aged son. We had an unforgettable experience across North and South India.
I entered this trip with some trepidation. India is not the easiest place to be a tourist, and our itinerary was aggressive: 7 different locations, 4 flights, and all but one of the cities we visited was new to me.
The second half of our trip, in the South Indian state of Kerala, was more tranquil, and I had the time to catch up on my yoga practice. One morning while in Kumarakom, I did a 95 minute on-demand class taught by an old friend and one of my favorite yoga teachers, Rolf Gates.
At the start of the class, Rolf tells the story of driving his then-7-year-old son to a new gym class. Before being dropped off, Rolf’s son announces:
“After the class, I will tell you if I loved it or I hated it.” Laughter ensues.
Rolf goes on to explain what we all, on some level, know: that it is this kind of binary, reactive, judgmental mindset that is the source of our suffering.
And yet, that thinking was exactly what I carried going into this trip: nervous about so many unknowns, I slipped into the most reactive version of myself, approaching each new situation a bit like Rolf’s 7-year-old son. My involuntary judgmental filter made nothing better—even when the answer was “loved it.”
I spent a while being reactive and judgmental with myself about my reactive nature….
And then it occurred to me that this is not how I approach all things. It is, instead, how I approach some new things. I started to think about it like this:
For things that are Core activities for me, whether professional or personal, I’m not particularly reactive: because I have significant experience with things in this realm, I’ve cultivated the ability to stay present and not be crashed against the rocks of my own judgmental thoughts.
For example, in a work context I’ve had tons of difficult conversations. Most of the time, I manage to stay grounded during these conversations, and I don’t get hijacked by reactive thoughts screaming “This is BAD. Make it STOP.”
Similarly, I’ve had enough experience with exercise to know that the feeling that something is hard or unpleasant is not meaningful, so I can stay far away from Good or Bad mindset.
This got me thinking that the more useful diagram looks something like this:
My level of reactivity is in inverse proportion to how new and unfamiliar an activity or role is.
(Aside: I think “role” matters as much as “activity” here. Meaning, in my professional role, which I occupy every day, everything feels less new—even being in India. But “tourist in India” is a new role for me, one where I feel less confident or clear.)
If this framing resonates for you, then there are a few important conclusions.
First, we know that most important work has elements that are hard or unpleasant. This means that our path to making a meaningful impact requires us to move towards challenging situations, to stay grounded in them, and to manage through them successfully.
We have to get good at persisting through the hard bits.
And the best way to persist is turn down our reactivity, to be less subject to the “this is GOOD / this is BAD” narrative that pushes against us achieving our goals.
This means that—referring back to the diagram—we have two jobs.
One is to recognize that we react differently to new things. This awareness alone helps us turn down our reactive voice or, at least, pay it less heed.
Second, we have to take steps to move new but important activities towards the center of the diagram. We make the unfamiliar familiar through concerted exposure and repetition. And we will get better at hard things by doing them more often.
Importantly, we improve not only because our skillfulness increases. We get better because our increased exposure decreases our reactiveness.
Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach and Amanda Doyle remind us each week in their podcast that We Can Do Hard Things. That’s true.
But perhaps the headline should be: we must choose to do hard things.
